For many of us, our ideas on what is true are constantly changing. Our idea about reality is formed by the world view of the culture in which we live. On the other hand, we also form an idea about reality and truth on the basis of our own experiences and inner knowing. Because of this, we may come to a realization that things are intrinsically different from what we had first assumed to be based on the world view of the culture in which we live.
While Western science was long regarded by many as the absolute authority on truth, an ever-growing number of people no longer regard it as the only true authority. The world view derived from traditional, reductionist science in fact restricts our scope to perceive and for many people is no longer satisfactory.
The great traditions of wisdom all assert that among the many possible truths, something of the nature of a Universal Truth should exist (de Vries, 2007). As De Vries (2007) asserts in the book "The Whole Elephant", rather than being the collection of information, the Universal Truth distinguishes itself from rational thinking through the integration of the heart. This Truth is independent of time, culture, religion and the multitude of our own different relative truths.
Depending on our skill to establish inner contact with a multidimensional world via our soul we distinguish between Truth on the one hand, and theories, concepts and opinions on the other (de Vries, 2007). Already centuries ago, the Christian mystic Eckhart (1260 - 1328) advised: “Love is required to know Truth, and knowledge of Truth is expressed by Love. (...) Whenever truth and love are separated from each other, the result is either sentimentality or dry intellectualism, in which power is divorced from compassion.”
He indicates that many of our modern predicaments are due to our dedication to truth as an exclusively mental attribute, while both these attributes, truth and love, are in fact the most essential aspects of the human soul.
